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It’s finally time for our favorite festive holiday and 2017 is coming to an end. This has been nothing but an incredible year. Here’s a summary of the year and some of our plans for the coming year.

The Equine Fusion team has already found the Christmas spirit and decorated the Christmas tree together – which has now become a tradition.

Equine Fusion’s headquarter is located in Stavanger, on the west coast of Norway. We finally got our first snowfall last week! Now we’re just crossing our fingers and hoping for a white Christmas too.

It has been an eventful year for us. We started this blog after the summer, which we truly enjoy creating, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do. We also decided to start sending out a newsletter. We send the newsletter to our dealers and partners one month and to our community the next month. We’re super thankful that so many signed up for this, and we promise to keep the newsletters coming in 2018. We’re going to share even more helpful information, inspiration and product news.

Growing Team

We’ve also expanded our team this year. Horse enthusiast Christina, the R&D manager, joined us this summer.

And Anders, the financial accountant, joined us this spring.
Anders has been on a horse once in his life, and that was when we had a team building earlier this year. He’s quickly learning a lot about horses. We’re very excited to see our team grow.

Along with them, we’ve also welcomed Jerome, our R&D Engineer.
He doesn’t have a horse background – however, he has done a great job so far and is hanging out with the horses – doing various tests with jogging shoes and enjoying himself.
He even goes for a ride or two occasionally!

New Jogging Shoe

In 2017 we released the All Terrain Ultra model – a combination of two existing models. This model was based on feedback from our customers and also a lot of testing. We’re thrilled with the model, and the feedback we’ve gotten so far.

Now we’re ready to say bye to 2017 and excited to see what the new year will bring.
We can already tell you there will be some exciting product news and we’ll continue to work with the focus on horse welfare as our main priority. Keep an eye on our Facebook page if you don’t want to miss these news.

Happy, Performing Horses

Either your horse is competing all over the world or roaming around in your backyard, we want to help keep your horse happy and performing. Your horse should stay content on the short trip through the quiet woods, as well as in the arena with a cheering audience!

Our slogan “happy, performing horses” isn’t necessarily aimed at horses who have to perform in terms of competitions. We want them to be happy in their everyday tasks and able to take on any task.

We hope we can stay in touch with you in 2018 too. Through dialogue with our customers, we can strive to become better at what we do.

Don’t hesitate on letting us know what topics you wish to read about on our blog and in our newsletter.

The Equine Fusion team always put horse health and safety first. To make sure our animal friends are comfortable and stay healthy we have developed some principles for our jogging shoes to live up to. We call them the Five Degrees of Freedom.

Forward – The need for slide/strike movement (just the right amount of grip)

Sideways – (outwards both sides at the heel) – the need to secure natural blood flow and dampening

Torsion – the need for the hoof to twist freely at contact with the ground

Take the jogging shoe on/off – only use when needed

Why are the Five Degrees of Freedom important?

To give balance and stability since every horse land differently depending on surface and gait.
To enable natural hoof functionality and promote soundness of the horse.
To give the rider the freedom of choice to use a hoof protection when needed.
The five freedoms play an important role in both horse and rider safety, connecting you with your horse from the ground up.

How can the Equine Fusion Jogging Shoe help ensuring that the Five Degrees of Freedom are met?

Renate Weller, professor at the Royal Veterinary College in London, has done research on lameness in horses. The research showed that 80 percent of horse lameness is located in the foot. This shows how important Equine Fusions focus on hoof health is. Our soles are made out of rubber. Rubber is a formable material, which makes it possible for the hoof to expand and sink into the sole when the hoof lands, as well as utilize the entire area under the hoof. This encourages blood flow and circulation in the horse’s hooves.

In 2016, Equine Fusion partnered up with Professor Lars Roepstorff and The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to complete a testing program using the Orono Biomechanical Surface Tester. The test compared our jogging shoes to other alternative hoof boot designs as well as steel shoes. The tests showed that our All Terrain sole reduced the maximum loads on the hoof at the early landing phase better than any other object tested.

The five freedoms make up an important framework for Equine Fusion while working on making the best hoof boots possible. Your horses are depending on the riders to keep their hooves healthy, and we are here to help your four-legged friends remain happy and performing horses!